Tuesday, November 26, 2013

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT: PUTTING THE FUN IN DYSFUNCTION

Around the holidays you hear people talking about how they will survive their family. What fresh hell will the dinner table bring this year? Good times. If only there was a show more messed up than the family they have that they could laugh at!

When it comes to dysfunctional TV families, there are few challengers to The Bluth family for top of the heap. Can you believe it has been TEN YEARS since the show premiered? Crazy. It was religious appointment television for the gang at Shuffle Function for its entire run. Did we binge watch the unexpected fourth season on Netflix? Hells yes. Arrested Development is one of the funniest shows we have ever seen. Of course it was too good to last!

I was milling around on Hulu tonight and I came across this documentary I had heard about a few years ago. It was produced years after the show was dead and buried, and it was completed just as the announcement about Netflix was made. It has the unfortunate title "The Arrested Development Documentary Project", and it features most of the cast (minus Jessica Walters and Michael Cera), as well as Mitch Hurwitz, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, and even some network pinheads. If it has a major flaw it is the occasional annoying fan talking head, but the fans are a key part of the documentary, so you'll have to get used to it. But the stories about the production and the struggles of the show are pretty interesting for fans.